Social conservatives have been getting more obvious about bullying women into accepting their self-sacrificing, self-effacing model of womanhood. They're having to get louder because fewer women are listening.

Two pieces from the anti-choice hub LifeNews over the past week tell us oh so much about the gender politics of that movement right now: that women should be willing to sacrifice everything, up to and including their lives, to satisfy their ideal of how women should be.

Using myself as an example and shoring it up with some cheeky language, I’d argued that women should not feel obliged to give in to conservative guilt-tripping about how we should curtail our own happiness to fit their notion of a “model” woman. The idea that women should have that level of autonomy is treated as so self-evidently evil at LifeNews that the site simply quotes me, at length, and expects its audiences to be horrified.

Not to hammer this point too hard, but it’s telling what parts of my piece they found appalling enough to focus on: a passage where I point out that having a baby is very disruptive and, since I like my life as it is, I don’t feel inclined to disrupt it. LifeNews ended its post by quoting me saying, “I choose me.” Evidently, those are the most horrifying words a woman could utter.

The issue here, to be very clear, is not to sit in judgment of Mazzola, who was facing what no doubt felt like an impossible choice. The issue here is that LifeNews is romanticizing death in childbirth as the highest aspiration of womanhood and “no greater love.” As Jessica Valenti noted at TheGuardian, the situation sounds complex, but it is being flattened out in service of the idea that “the most important, beautiful thing [women] can do is perish.”

If you take these two stories together, it becomes clear that LifeNews, and the extreme social conservatism it represents, is pushing a very strong message: Women should be willing to give up everything—your ambitions, your comforts, your happiness, your presence in your children’s world, your very life—to conform to an ideal. It’s an ideal of womanhood as martyrdom, in which women give and give with no thought for themselves, where motherhood is the highest calling and marriage is about being a helpmeet and not a partner.

It used to be easier for social conservatives to wax poetic about “life” and “family” and let the underlying desire to control women go unspoken. But in recent years feminism has risen to the top of popular consciousness, demonstrating—particularly to young women—that there are a number of appealing ways to be a feminist and to define what their lives should be like. Because of this, social conservatives seem to feel more pressure to spell out in rather unsubtle terms exactly what they want women to be, whether the women in question like it or not.

Of course, this desire to control women’s behavior isn’t limited to our reproductive rights. Take this piece by Mary Eberstadt, published Thursday in The National Review. The article, titled “Jailhouse Feminism,” argues that feminists’ lack of interest in scolding young women to be more ladylike makes feminism an invalid ideology. Eberstadt is miffed that feminists are often “aggressive and angry” and even—gasp!—use four-letter words sometimes, calling this “the potty-mouthed bile-o-rama.”

Ironic uses of the word “slut” and “bitch” particularly draw Eberstadt’s ire. “Repurposing the word, it’s argued, will protect women from the damage done by ‘slut-shaming,’ or criticizing women for their sexual conduct. By ‘women,’ of course, is meant sexually active women of a certain type, the kind who in a different age were known as, well … you know,” she complains. Given that Eberstadt herself evidently wishes she could just call women of “a certain type” “sluts,” it appears “potty-mouthed” language is fine, so long as it’s being used to hurt and shame women. But if women themselves use it to free themselves, that’s crossing the line.

Overall, feminists’ “approach takes for granted the sexual revolution’s first commandment, which is that any such act ever committed by any woman is by definition beyond reproach,” she writes, conflating feminism and the sexual revolution. It’s an odd statement, seemingly suggesting that if you allow women to enjoy sex without shaming them for it, you might as well allow them to murder and pillage.

Closer to the truth: Feminists believe women’s moral worth is determined by how they treat people, including themselves, and not by whether they cross some arbitrary, ever-shifting line into liking sex too much.

Eberstadt goes on—because of course she does—offering to diagnose feminists from afar as pathetic attention-seekers and the usual misogynist pablum. But more telling are her rote references to Miley Cyrus, Beyoncé, Lena Dunham, Fifty Shades of Grey, Rihanna, Ciara, and even Britney Spears, whom she identifies as a “feminist singer.” It is true that pop culture of recent years has been shaped in large part by the urge, sometimes explicitly feminist and sometimes not, to let women express themselves with more of the freedom previously only allowed to men. While Eberstadt displays poor understanding of the specifics, her sense that young women have a plethora of role models of liberation to look up to isn’t really off-base.

On this fact, there is clearly broad agreement between conservatives and feminists: It’s become much, much harder to terrorize women with messages about how they are shameful, even evil, people if they do things like make decisions about their health or their futures, enjoy sex, or express their opinions. The only real dispute is over whether or not this change is a bad thing.

It seems like an absurd challenge I’ve given myself: write a goodbye column, a joint elegy as the runs of two pop-culture masterpieces come to a close the same weekend. One is an insanely popular book and film series about a fictional wizard in England, and the other an under-appreciated television show about a football loving town in Texas, seemingly only connected by the coincidental timing of their final installments.

But for me, and the RHRC readership who has shared my intense experience in these two fictional universes over the past few years, there is a strong connection: these are stories that we, as a community with feminist values and concern for the erosion of our rights, have adored. These are stories that brought us comfort in a bleak climate, stories that have given us confidence. We have appreciated genuine female pop culture presences, spunky, smart girls and tough, loving women–and just as importantly, sensitive portrayals of male characters and their emotional lives. Even more than that, the women in these stories have transcended being “good female characters” who subvert stereotypes into just being good characters, period; real ones, ones whose journeys we are, sometimes to a desperate extent, obsessed with.

As we lament the dearth of good role models on TV, the troubling portrayals of female sexuality in the media, Reality TV’s forays into obsession with external appearance and the news-media’s penchant for victim-blaming, it’s worth taking a moment to consider what has been done right in these two series. Feel free to bid them your own proper goodbyes in the comments section.

Hogwarts, England

So much–perhaps too much– has been written about Harry Potter in recent days as the “think pieces” about what this series’ ultimate film installment means for a generation weaned on the books, about the franchise’s literary and celluloid flaws and its triumphs, about its significance to our era and so on. Still, let’s swoop in on our brooms one last time.

In recent months, I have noticed a lot of fairly legitimate complaints about how JK Rowling’s prodigious creativity doesn’t entirely extend to upending gender roles–she has a few bad-ass ladies who fight, but mostly her female characters are brainiacs like Hermione or fussing moms like Mrs. Weasley.

However, what fascinates me is Rowling’s ability to push a subtly feminist agenda even within that traditional gender structure. Hermione’s blossoming role as more than girl with her hand in the air and nose in a book of spells–as Harry’s companion and partner in ingenuity, and in suffering, and in a desperate desire to make the world better, was obvious in the last installment of the film series, which I felt was really “her movie.“

A cult of Hermione has grown up, wondering why isn’t she the star?But she is, in her way. Harry Potter is a classic hero’s quest, and having Hermione play the supporting role may not be as denigrating as you think. The supporting role is often more interesting than the hero: think Han Solo and Princess Leia compared to bland Luke, spunky Samwise Gamgee and brooding Aragorn next to beatific Frodo. This is the tradition we’re working in, and to have that role be played by a brilliant girl who labors on behalf of oppressed workers and always has her hand raised is, in my opinion, pretty darn awesome.

And beyond Hermione, Rowling’s commitment to feminist storytelling holds true as well. As the events of the final movie released today unfold, it’s going to be clear that JK Rowling also has a lot (a lot) to say about motherhood and its importance: Lily Potter, Harry’s deceased mother, and Mrs. Weasley, Ron’s mom, are in many ways the heroines of this final chapter because of their fierce attachment to their offspring (the latter’s “Not my daughter, you bitch!” is probably the winning tagline of the entire series, isn’t it?). Lily Potter’s past kindness to double agent Severus Snape keeps him on the right side of the fight and we learn that her generous heart reformed her rogue of a sweetheart, James. Meanwhile, the protective spell she’s cast on Harry by dying for him has basically been what’s saved him throughout the book– that and Hermione’s cleverness. Oh and in the very, very end? Another mother, Narcissa Malfoy, has worries for her own which son cause her to betray Voldemort and save Harry.

Not to get too Freudian, but the final book’s crucial moment involves Harry rejecting the pursuit of the “elder wand” and immortality, as Hermione long urged him to. Rowling’s absolutely saying something about the role of “traditionally feminine” values in a male world: love, compassion, empathy, self-sacrifice, thinking things through carefully and rationally. These, in Rowling’s imagination, are values far superior to courage, anger and power.

Dillon, Texas

Love, self-sacrifice, thinking things through carefully and rationally, empathy and compassion: these are the same qualities Tami Taylor and her football-coach extraordinaire husband Eric bring to the extremely patriarchal town of Dillon. Like Harry Potter, “Friday Night Lights” infused these traditionally “feminine values” into its narratives, focusing on the importance of subsuming one’s ego for the good of the team, the community.

Unlike Harry Potter, which had a hilarious but chaste obsession with snogging, FNL dealt with sex: directly, unashamedly, and perhaps most remarkably for a network, non-judgmentally. The idea that two teenagers in love would have sex was treated as a given, and the idea that different young people had different sexual desires, urges, needs and maturity levels was also a thread that lasted throughout the entire series.

Who can forget the way Lyla bit her lip when her evangelical boyfriend refused to have sex? That girl was, well, she was horny, and that was okay. The series made it clear: she was with the wrong guy. Or what about when Tyra grew to see herself as having more value than a sex object–as someone with a brain, and more importantly, a future?

Of course a highlight has been the immortal Tami and Juli “sex talks,” which we’ve dissected here with such fascination, as emblematic of the ways in which the show unlike anything we’ve ever seen on TV before: painful, and honest, and only the beginning of a long conversation between mother and daughter.

And then there was Becky’s abortion–which remains, to this date, and probably will for a long time, one of the only truly strong treatments of abortion on a TV series, cable or network. And that it was a teenage girl’s choice–an even bigger TV no-no–makes the episode’s resonance all the more powerful, as does the fact that Becky has emerged this new season being able to talk about her ordeal: substantially wiser without losing her girlishness.

Yes, this season the writers gave us an irritating, perhaps cliched, storyline about Julie sleeping with her TA, but it wasn’t entirely inconsistent with her character. She’s consistently been attracted to slightly smarmy older men, and her status as the golden child in her stable household might lead her to seek out approval from an authority figure in college.

Still, the less said on that the better. Because in the final season, the FNL writers focused less on sexuality and more on other kinds of gender inequality. We had a girl trying to become a football coach and we had Tami thinking about advancing her career for once, after being the dutiful coach’s wife for almost two decades–and Eric having to confront this reality about their marriage. How wonderful and painful the fights between them were in these last few episodes. How brave of the show’s creators to highlight the marital and gender imbalance, the support structure of women and girls that buttresses the glory-gaining football team again and again over a beautiful five years.

Shameless plug: if you want to read and think more about feminism and Friday Night Lights, my somewhat lengthy essay on Tami as a stand-in for the writers’ views on girls sexuality is part of this awesome book, a Friday Night Lights Companion, that’s about to hit shelves.

Even though these two stories come to an end this weekend, we’re so lucky that we can come back to them again and again and relive the best moments. We can forever hold them up as an example of how good art can sustain feminist values without leaving a commitment to emotional truth behind.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/07/15/feminist-goodbye-harry-potter-friday-night-lights/feed/0Why We All (Well, A Lot of Us) Loved “Bridesmaids”http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/05/17/well-loved-bridesmaids/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=well-loved-bridesmaids
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/05/17/well-loved-bridesmaids/#commentsTue, 17 May 2011 21:03:37 +0000While far from perfect, this bawdy comedy with a heart proved that upending Hollywood cliches actually makes for a better movie.

And Bridesmaids itself, a work of film whose centerpiece comedic moment, suggested by Hollywood bromance king Judd Apatow, is an infamous scene involving graphic food poisoning at a bridal salon–shouldn’t have been a revelation. It shouldn’t have made me, and many of the women I’ve spoken with, feel such a strange sensation as we watched, such an intense feeling of gratitude for the writers and director.

But all these things were true, too. For the first time since I watched Juno (and that movie’s problematic treatment of abortion ruined the experience in some ways for me) I had the feeling that the screenwriters of a mainstream comedy were talking to me, “woman to woman.” And I detest Judd Apatow’s films and often find Kristen Wiig’s SNL acting irritating. This movie was not, as advertised, “The Hangover” with boobs. It was instead a laugh-fest with a heart, and even as it exaggerated everything for comic effect, its characters were believable.

I certainly do not believe that men and women are intrinsically different, nor do I think that there exists some sort of a universal experience of womanhood that we can all relate to at the snap of our fingers.

No, rather I think that women, as they’re projected onscreen by a sexist industry, are not usualy real people. So when they do seem real, many of us will see ourselves in them (newsflash: this is the experience that white men have when they watch most movies). We’re so used to watching seductresses or shrews, adorable heroines who are “met-cute” by the right guy at the wrong time, sassy best friends or any of a host of stereotypes that we’re bowled over by a central female character who has an arc, and who has baggage, and who has an off-color sense of humor. This, in part, explains the wildly positive reaction to Bridesmaids.

And surprise! By ignoring cliches, the movie actually works better–you don’t have to be well-versed in feminist theory to be dying for more than the same-old from Hollywood.

“Chick-flicks” or “rom-coms,” are usually overpopulated by women who move about in airy houses or apartments with floor-to-ceiling windows, impeccably dressed with smooth faces, save dimples, and whose “humanizing trait” is almost always frenetic perfectionism with a dash of clumsiness thrown in for good measure. As Tad Friend’s widely-circulated piece in the New Yorker on women in comedy notes (and a video from Nerve.com documents), this clumsiness is actually a “rule:”

“‘To make a woman adorable,’ one female successful screenwriter says, ‘you have to defeat her at the beginning… It’s as simple as making the girl cry, fifteen minutes into the movie.’ Relatability is based on vulnerability, which creates likeability. With male characters, smoking pot, getting drunk, and lying around watching porn is likeable; with females, the same conduct is hateful. So funny women must not only be gorgeous; they must fall down and then sob, knowing it’s all their fault.”

And by gesturing at relatability with the shortcut of clumsiness, producers fail to create characters who resemble us at all. Thus, your typical heroines do not possess flaws like deep-seated insecurity, big mouths, aggression of the passive or plain variety, laziness, or a regular employment of substance abuse beyond a cocktail or two.

Enter Annie, Bridesmaids’ protagonist who possesses every single one of these failings. She’s got a propensity for putting her foot in her mouth, she spends too much time feeling sorry for herself and moping, she can be both outright nasty and more subtly cutting, and yet she’s quite human. She’s had a spate of bad luck, which explains her bad behavior. She’s outrageously funny, which helps us forgive that bad behavior. And her tendency towards self-destruction is channelled in ways that women and men of all stripes can relate to. She acts out by getting in trouble in public, but also by ignoring good things that come her way, by taking her own creation, a gloriously over-the-top cupcake that’s a symbol of her love and talent, and diffidently shoving it down her throat.

As played by a surprisingly toned down and believable Kristen Wiig, Annie experiences a long and hilarious meltdown with an understandable cause–it’s triggered when her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph), at the onset of her wedding planning season introduces the miserable Annie to a new friend, a ridiculously wealthy, impeccably gorgeous, and “take-charge” type who seems programmed to make Annie feel wretched and inadequate in every way. This intruder threatens to further sever Annie from her friend and lifeline, Lillian, embarking on a new phase of life.

Annie’s friendship with Lillian has already been heralded across the internet as a victory, encapsulated in a small moment at the movie’s outset in which the two women talk sex in specific details, and smear food on their teeth over breakfast at a diner–like a scene from Sex in the City with less one-liners and more gentle joking. It’s endearingly intimate, as is their eventual reconciliation at the film’s end after a series of increasingly insane pratfalls, including the gross-out scene mentioned above (which I closed my eyes for part of, but a friend said she felt like was a celebration of the normalcy of the female body), another in which the two dueling friends of Lillian try to top each other with endless, deeply meaningful toasts, and a set-piece featuring a scared-of-flying Annie maxed out on tranquilizers and booze paying paranoid, intoxicated homage to a famous Twilight Zone episode, mid-flight to Vegas.

The film hits its audience’s funny-bones in every way possible: with slapstick, with ribald humor, with situational awkwardness, with clever repartee, and with a down-to-earth supporting cast, including Melissa McCarthy, already heralded as a scene-stealer. Bridesmaids’ plot avoids being unnecessarily cruel to Annie, even as it humiliates her. And the writers manage to capture the sweet intentions behind some wedding traditions while sending up, with a real wallop, the absurd excesses of the wedding-industrial complex, French designers, ruffles, champagne fountains and all.

Annie reminds me a little bit of that other foul-mouthed, self-destructive icon of modern womanhood, Bridget Jones, but with a trajectory that focuses more on her repairing her friendship and overcoming her slump then on her love life (one should note, however that my male and female viewing companions were pleased with the male love interests, both the cad and the “good guy)”.

Let’s be clear. This mainstream, commercial film is far from perfect: the bridal party was way too white and unnecessarily hetero-normative. Still it’s about time that someone in Hollywood took on the joys and pitfalls of close female friendship in a broadly accessible way–it shouldn’t have felt so unprecedented, but it did.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/05/17/well-loved-bridesmaids/feed/1Film Review: Let’s Talk About Sex: A Starting Pointhttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/05/03/lets-talk-about/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=lets-talk-about
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/05/03/lets-talk-about/#commentsTue, 03 May 2011 14:39:32 +0000Along with the excellent “Daddy, I Do,” this film is part of a new generation of documentaries which looks at America’s dysfunctional relationship with teen sexuality.

Editor’s Note: The new documentary “Let’s Talk About Sex” aims to start a conversation about our society’s dysfunctional view of teen sexuality. We’ve asked a few of our authors to join in that conversation and discuss their views of the film.

There’s no question that the film “Let’s Talk About Sex” is aesthetically compelling and well-made, directed by fashion photographer James Houston. And there’s no question that the subject matter it tackles is vital. Along with the excellent “Daddy, I Do,” this film is part of a new generation of documentaries which look at America’s dysfunctional relationship with teen sexuality as a subject as troublesome and worthy of investigation as the melting of the glaciers or the failed war on drugs.

“Living in America, you can’t help but notice how much sex is a part of the culture, especially youth culture,” Houston muses at the film’s outset, pointing out to viewers that we have “the highest teen birth rate in the industrialized world” with some helpful footage of Bristol Palin thrown in for illustrative purposes. How do we reconcile that obsession with sex and that culture which would hail a teen mom as a spokesperson for abstinence?

For those of us interested in this subject, it’s 101-level stuff. But for a mainstream film, it breaks some interesting ground.

As our own Heather Corinna noted, much of the film’s focus was taken up with several themes: comparing American attitudes to those in Holland, particularly on interviewing parent-teen families in both countries and letting the juxtapositions speak for themselves, analyzing language related to sexuality, and illustrating the difficulty in bringing sex education in under the banner of sometimes-hostile religion.

In Holland, sex is “a normal part of daily life and conversation” and parents approve opposite-sex sleepovers because hey, better under their roofs than somewhere exposed, isolated or heaven forbid uncomfortable.

In America, however, we have purity vows instead. And even in “enlightened,” cosmopolitan New York, where purity rings are rarer, one Dutch teen who’d lived abroad noted there was nonetheless a stark difference in the level of taboo concerning sex.

Parental and social attitudes having been duly contrasted, one of the most troubling things uncovered by the filmmakers investigation was the result of these attitudes on teens behaviors. The differing attitudes towards carrying condoms was a single juxtaposition which distilled Americans’ dangerous prejudices. While the Dutch teens interviewed acknowledged that everyone carries condoms in their wallets: girls, boys, whoever, the Americans almost universally declared that a young man who carried condoms was “a pervert” not to be trusted, and a girl who carried condoms was assuredly “a slut.”

America: we’re so prudish that we tsk-tsk our way right into STDs and unintended pregnancies.

To me, this was the most powerful moment in the film, and it was further solidified when pop star Will.i.am gave a widely-circulated interview which underscored the same awful point about American culture: he said he wouldn’t date women who keep condoms handy, even discreetly in their top drawers because it’s “tacky.” I appreciated the film’s treatment of such attitudes as signifiers of something deeply awry.

Hand in hand with this twisted dichotomy was “Let’s Talk About Sex”’s tackling of the underlying discomfort found in American “language around sexuality.” Even the word “abstinence,” the film argued, contains “baggage.” “We’re putting sex in the same category as cocaine,” said a linguistic expert in an interview. “It’s threatening, scary, dangerous, compulsive.” We hear the words “filthy, dirty, polluting young minds.” Ultimately, the film argues, all this linguistic association paints sexuality as “an opponent who has needs, goals, that are different from our own…it’s a threat to us, we’re locked in a kind of struggle.”

Finally, the film only scratched the surface of the intra-religious struggle over sex ed, showing us one church leader determined to change things for the sake of kids’ health, and the entrenched attitudes he comes up against. This was fascinating but almost felt deserving of a film on its own.

This sort of content excellently lays out the fact that something is rotten in the state of American sex ed. But after viewing, I was eagerly waiting our own sex educator Heather Corinna’s take on “Let’s Talk About Sex” because I watched much of the documentary with my jaw open, nodding along in outrage, my critical faculties suspended.

Why? Because I was rather taken in by the documentary’s crisis-style framing which painted the issue as a dire one, one in need of action by all of us–even if it’s obvious to those of us in the community. The lack of sex education in our country is indeed a crisis, and it spreads from parents to schools to community and church groups, as the documentary accurately acknowledged. And it felt like such a relief to hear it addressed it such.

Still, as the film came to a close and I personally felt some of the requisite outrage and inspiration, I had to ask whether if such a film were distributed on a widespread basis, it could actually inspire Americans to pay attention and turn this into a cause.

Yes, the film may be revolutionary because it uses a mainstream format to unabashedly acknowledge a problem without attempting to tell “both sides of the story” when so much of our pop culture about teens and sex hedges its bets.

But does the film’s analysis of the problem run deep enough to help Americans understand the root causes and take action that ends up being meaningful? And as Heather said, who exactly is it aimed at? Bourgeois parents horrified that they’re being lapped by their Dutch counterparts? Squeamish adults unaware that their squeamishness isn’t good for the youth?

And that’s where Heather’s commentary proved to be so invaluable for me. She said “I find that to be the biggest missing piece for most parents and adults around these issues: not the why, but the how.” And indeed, while the film makes our hang-ups obvious, the missing piece is guidance on exactly what it will take navigate and overcome those hang-ups for safety’s sake. If our cultural psychosis when it comes to sex is so deeply ingrained it’s evident in our language, in our everyday behavior, then as Heather says, mere outrage isn’t going to change things overnight.

I’d love to see this film paired with “Daddy, I Do,” and with a third film that actually offers advice to adults on talking about sex with teens and highlights the amazing people like Heather who are actually making strides in this direction. Then we’d be approaching something really useful.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/05/03/lets-talk-about/feed/1Fairy Tales and Female Sexualityhttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/03/14/fairy-tale-female-sexuality/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=fairy-tale-female-sexuality
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/03/14/fairy-tale-female-sexuality/#commentsMon, 14 Mar 2011 07:28:59 +0000Ever since there have been fairy tales, there has been feminist re-appropriation of fairy tales. And, the moral of the story often shifts with the mores of the time.

]]>Don’t go out into the woods. Beware ugly older women bearing strange gifts. Only a princely kiss can resurrect you.

The anti-feminist messages in fairy tales, both in their classic forms from the tales of Grimm, Anderson and Perrault, and their sanitized Disneyfied versions, abound. Heroines are frequently passive, resisting even Disney’s “spunkification” and lose their voices or fall into slumbers. They are rescued by princes or kindly huntsmen. Evil befalls them during puberty. Many fairy tales that have permeated the collective unconsciousness are known for these misogynist tropes and particularly for their warnings about female sexuality and its existence as both a threat and as threatened.

Red Riding Hood, which has just been remade into a (by all accounts mediocre) Twilight-esque tale of a dangerous teen love triangle by Catherine Hardwicke, draws on one of the more symbolically rich of these stories. As Hardwicke herself said “When you have problems when you’re five years old, it’s just like ‘Red Riding Hood.’ ‘I’m scared to go in the woods’…Later on, when you’re 12 or 13, you really notice the sexual implications. The wolf is in bed, inviting her into bed. You start reading it on a different level, once you hit that sexual awakening.”

Charles Perrault, who popularized the “Little Red Riding Hood” story, made it pretty clear from the outset that the “wolf” is a seducer, and the story a metaphor for women staying away from sex.

From this story one learns that children, especially young lasses, pretty, courteous and well-bred, do very wrong to listen to strangers, And it is not an unheard thing if the Wolf is thereby provided with his dinner. I say Wolf, for all wolves are not of the same sort; there is one kind with an amenable disposition — neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! Who does not know that these gentle wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous!

It’s quite explicit, isn’t it?

Susan Brownmiller goes even further in her seminal book “Against Our Will,” writing that “little Red Riding Hood is a parable of rape,” with the main character an utterly passive victim. The story serves as a warning to girls about the menace in the woods and is an early indicator of “rape culture.”

Indeed, as Paul Harris of the Guardian wrote in an article about Hollywood’s resurgent interest in fairy-stories, “Beneath the magical surface of a fairytale, with its castles and princesses, often lurk ideas around sexuality, the dangers of growing up and leaving home, relationships between children and parents, and the threat that adult strangers can pose.” And in particular, he notes, there’s a “conservative” streak about female sexuality in these stories which is one of the reasons they continue to get resurrected, retold and deconstructed.

Along with “Red Riding Hood,” archetypical tales like “Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Bluebeard’s caste all share concerns about female sexuality. In “Beauty and the Beast,” the chaste beauty can tame the male beast–even when she’s imprisoned against her will. In “Sleeping Beauty” a bitter old fairy punishes the heroine with slumber when she pricks her finger, a symbol for menstruation (as is Red Riding Hood’s cloak). In “Snow White” the lovely young queen also pricks her finger, becomes sexual and has a child. Then suddenly she “dies” and is replaced by a wicked queen, a witch. Every day this queen gets a talk from her mirror who feeds on her jealousy and her obsession with her youth and beauty until she feels compelled to kill the younger, more beautiful and more sexually alluring young woman. Both Snow White and Sleeping Beauty require resurrection by a man.

Similar symbolism is at work in “The Little Mermaid,” in which a young woman, besotted by a handsome prince, goes to an older witch and exchanges her soul for a pair of legs that hurt her to use and even make her bleed.

Still, ever since there have been fairy tales, there has been feminist re-appropriation of fairy tales. As with the myths around creatures like vampires and werewolves which sometimes intersect with fairy tales, the moral of the story often shifts with the mores of the time. From Anne Sexton’s twisted fairy tale poems to Angela Carter’s brilliant stories to the new tumblr meme which turns Disney heroines into glasses-wearing, irony-spouting hipsters, fairy tales have been fertile ground for re-imaginings and inversions.

Storytellers from the women’s movement and beyond also reclaimed the heroine from male-dominated literary tradition, recasting her as the physical or sexual aggressor and questioning the machismo of the wolf. In the 1984 movie The Company of Wolves, inspired by playwright Angela Carter, the heroine claims a libido equal to that of her lascivious stalker and becomes a wolf herself. In the Internet tale “Red Riding Hood Redux,” the heroine unloads a 9mm Beretta into the wolf and, as tufts of wolf fur waft down, sends the hunter off to a self-help group, White Male Oppressors Anonymous.

Orenstein went to the origins of the “Riding Hood” myth and discovered that in its original incarnations, the heroine is much less passive and more of a trickster who ends up outwitting the wolf without the aid of any huntsman. She is just one of many writers who devote an entire book to analyzing Red Riding Hood from a gendered lens, while Carter is one of many artists to re-write the story with an entirely new agenda.

Fairy tales will always be with us, whether being sugarcoated and Disneyfied or fed to us Feminists should continue embrace the retelling and transformation of these tales as part of our ritual for contending with the myths and tropes of patriarchy. Even if Catherine Hardwicke sexualizes the story in a muddled way, she’s taking part in a proud tradition.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/03/14/fairy-tale-female-sexuality/feed/1Feminism, Film and the Academy Awards Q+Ahttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/02/25/feminism-film-academy-awards/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feminism-film-academy-awards
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/02/25/feminism-film-academy-awards/#commentsFri, 25 Feb 2011 15:58:24 +0000A pre-Oscars Q+A with Melissa Silverstein of the Athena Film Festival and the Women and Hollywood blog.

]]>Two weeks ago I swung by the amazing Athena Film festival and watched Leslie Bennetts of Vanity Fair have a fascinating conversation with Greta Gerwig about all of the Hollywood double-standards we feminist are well aware of–from the need to be red-carpet ready to the dearth of movies that explore female friendship, to the way Hollywood’s pre-packaged narratives which ignore daily life can hurt women’s stories. I thought I’d keep the conversation going, pre-Oscars, with the festival’s co-organizer and the internet’s resident expert on feminist critiques of the movie biz, Melissa Silverstein. I hope this interview becomes an annual tradition!

MS: Well, it came out of en event that I worked on for the director Jane Campion over a year ago. There were a lot of women directors talking about not having forums for their works. Kathryn Kolbert had just created the Athena Forum for Leadership at Barnard, so we put together seed grant applications and that’s how it started.

There’s like 600-some-odd seats in there. It was every exciting. We were thrilled people wanted to see that movie, be part of its conversation, learn about the topics. Everything at the festival was under the rubric of women’s leadership but we covered all different kinds of issues [from Catholic womenpriests to anti-violence activism in Harlem to Israeli and Palestinian girls at camp together]. One of our goals was not to have too many downer movies. Instead we got people going, thinking, and figuring out the next steps.

A lot of people came who were really interested in the films. I think we did a great job on outreach.

It was interesting to see this feminist-minded film festival followed in short order by the Oscars which everyone has sort of said this year is a backslide in terms of representation of women and people of color?

I find the whole thing really bittersweet. There’s a real lack of visibility of women–Kathryn Bigleow was everywhere last year. We had a really interesting narrative about woman outside the system who had put in her dues and was finally embraced by the system. There were lots of questions abut “how did she get where she was?”which led to interesting cultural conversatations. This year it just feels like that didnt even happen. It feels like it’s completely gone.And with Lisa Cholodenko’s movie (“The Kids Are All Right“) and Debra Granik’s movie (“Winter’s Bone”) they’re pigeonholed by being talked about in terms of their scripts, not their direction. They wrote these movies, and they directed these movies. Not too many guys write and direct (Christopher Nolan is one exception). But in Hollywood they really like their directors for hire.

Are there any moments we should watch for during the Oscars–aside from the big categories–that might highlight women in an interesting way?

I do think a woman is going to be up on that stage: Susanne Bier, the director of “In a Better World” which is the front-runner for best foreign film. And she has a long history of making really good movies out of Denmark. People should really take a look at her movies. I’ve watched almost all of them and I find them terrific.

There are strong young women nominated; there are Jennifer Lawrence and Hailee Steinfeld’s performances. It’s funny about “True Grit”–it made 150 million dollars, and it’s movie about a girl. But they sold it as a western starring Jeff Bridges.

And what about documentaries?

Lucy Walker’s Waste Land has continued to be part of the conversation the whole year–although it has been overshadowed by Banksy. There are other documentaries like “Inside Job” and “Restrepo” about our economy and our wars.

We were lucky enough to have Poster Girl, which is nominated, at the Athena Film Festival. This is a very moving film about a young woman who joined the army because she had that desire. But now all her war injuries are making her fight to rebuild her life and it was fascinating to see that perspective from a young woman. There are several women nominated for documentary short-subjects.

What’s so interesting for me is I never know what is going to provoke a reaction. There was one post on Emma Watson’s hair, how she feels like she has to grow it long to get new roles. It wasn’t a big deal post. But it brought out nasty trolls. And it also brought people who wouldn’t maybe normally find my stuff, or be interested in the feminist conversation about Hollywood. I hope people look around the site and see what else is there. That’s part of adjusting to IndieWIRE: I want it to be a safe place for people who come by.

Do you think there’s connection between nurturing women at the ground level like at the Athena Film festival and the diversity we eventually see at the Oscars?

One can only hope. One problem is that women’s stories and women’s experiences are really not valued in the same way that men’s are. It doesn’t always come down to people winning awards. It comes down to valuing a piece of humanity as equal. We still have this conversation where what goes on for men is seen as norm while what goes on for women is seen as “other.” If we normalize what women experience and it’s shown on the big screen and little screen in profound way, and accepted in our culture as normal, things change all over the place. Movies do have those kinds of effects.

Right now, on Monday morning–people still talk about the big blockbuster. That’s how we’re indoctrinated to talk about movies. Women’s stories are not going to always be the stories about blowing things up. There will a couple of those each year, but that’s not the narrative of women’s lives. We need to be valuing other kinds of narratives, accepting them as equal.

Don’t you think that all the fashion snarking and the policing of people’s comments has made the Oscars more sanitized and boring?

Someone asked me, ‘are you going to live-tweet the Oscars?’ But I always feel like if I was doing it I would end up saying something really obnoxious about something someone’s wearing. I don’t want to think about that way. It’s always the women who do the risky things anyway [fashion-wise], and always the women who pay the price. It’s too much. We can’t pay all the prices.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/02/25/feminism-film-academy-awards/feed/1The Beneficent Patriarchy of “Big Love” Loses Its Lusterhttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/02/18/beneficent-patriarchy-loveloses-luster/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=beneficent-patriarchy-loveloses-luster
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/02/18/beneficent-patriarchy-loveloses-luster/#commentsFri, 18 Feb 2011 16:12:56 +0000The "heart" of Big Love has been in the question of how women survive in patriarchy, zooming in on the three wives struggling with the fundamental inequality of their relationships. But the show has lost its way.

]]>I began writing about Big Love because a character appears to have terminated a pregnancy this season. The story is this: an embryo was implanted in the not-exactly-young Adaleen by JJ, who is trying to create a pure polygamist race. Or something. Adaleen at first thinks it’s natural and her “treatments” are merely fertility treatments. JJ is the ex-husband of Adaleen’s daughter, Nicki. Nonetheless, Alby, who is Adaleen’s son, and Nicki’s brother and the “prophet” of the compound has handed his mother in marriage to JJ, and they’ve consummated it. In sum: she’s been forcibly wedded to her ex son-in-law and she thinks their baby is legit.

Once Adaleen realizes what’s been done to her, however, she acts out and kills JJ by burning down his lab with him inside it. But she’s kept the pregnancy through the help of constant hormone injections until ordered to stop by the “prophet” of her polygamist compound–Alby again. And so finally she flushes her pills down the toilet and declares herself “pure.” Presumably, the pregnancy is gone.

I tried to piece together all these rather ridiculous occurrences in the course of writing about the significance of Adaleen’s body being manipulated by men to create and then end her pregnancy. Indeed that’s just one of two major feminist plots this season: first wife Barb now believes that women can hold the Mormon “priesthood,” shocking everyone around her. But both of these plots are hamstrung by the vengeance and melodrama arising from principal character and “principle”-embracer Bill Henrickson’s dealings with extreme polygamists and the corrupt senate. Adaleen’s demon-baby story is in fact a pretty minor subplot–and an overly soapy one at that. And therein lies the problem with a feminist critique of the show. So instead of just writing about Adaleen’s womb, I’m writing about what happens when a feminist show loses its way.

Last year, I wrote that Big Love is a soap opera with an embedded critique of patriarchy. But in its final two seasons, the show has allowed that critique to get watered down as it plunged into a kidnapping plot ending with a limb getting severed in Mexico (yep!), and a series of improbable dramatic turns which explode not just its credibility as a feminist show, but as a believable one.

But oh, for what might have been. The series reached its artistic and its feminist climax in Season 3, particularly in a memorable “road trip episode”: “Come, Ye Saints.” In the course of this episode’s hour-long family “pilgrimage” across country, two family secrets were aired and both had to do with women’s bodily autonomy. First it comes out that holier-than-thou wife Nicki has been taking birth control, shocking her family which believes constant birthing earns them a spot in heaven. Second, oldest daughter Sarah–assumed to be a virgin–is revealed to be pregnant by her boyfriend and is in fact having a miscarriage on the trip. She has, by their standards, “defiled” her body. Throughout this tightly-plotted episode, the religious message that “you are not allowed to do what you want with your body (if you’re a woman)” was contrasted with the characters’ desires to personally empathize with each other. These conflicts over women’s bodies were an apt metaphor for sexual politics in the United States.

In the same vein, Adaleen’s bizarre pregnancy plot this season was assuredly meant to reflect on patriarchy: she wanted to have a baby to reaffirm her value as a woman–the only kind of contribution she could make in her misogynist world. But unlike the road trip episode, which expertly contrasted the weirdness of this family with the typical family dynamics of a car trip, the zigzagging plot undermined the message. Adaleen wanted to keep the pregnancy–even after learning of its weird origins–because of the “woman’s worth is in her womb” idea. Still, when her son-the-prophet told her she was impure, she got rid of the much-desired pregnancy to obey his wishes. Adaleen is the ultimate example of the woman who is utterly compliant with patriarchy–to her own doom. But this concept gets garbled in the web of violent revenge and lies (and arson) that are ultimately more numbing and dull than a more subtle exploration of Adaleen’s feelings might have been.

As “Come, Ye Saints” showed, Big Love always succeeded when it left behind all the feuding Utah factions, the twisted, violent politics of the ultra-polygamist compound where Bill grew up. Although all the political wheeling and dealing is ostensibly quite realistic for Utah’s political scene, it’s not the heart of the show. Instead, that heart has been in the question how women survive in patriarchy, zooming in on the three wives and Sarah struggling with the fundamental inequality of their relationships and finding coping mechanisms that range from independence to outright denial.

Bit by bit over the first few seasons, the fabric of this family life had begun to unravel–and been patched up just in the nick of time. One wife after another, in shifts, became unhappy and then grew appeased by her own task, or friendship, or attention from Bill–who, let’s face it, was a compelling expert at smoothing ruffled wifely feathers. Occasionally the wives have banded together, but more often they’re prone to jump on each others’ weaknesses and doubts to attain supremacy with Bill and enter into his confidence. Last season, Margene and Barb grew frustrated as Nikki finally confronted the trauma of her youth on the compound (sold off to marriage at 16 and essentially raped) and began acting out. In the current season, as Barb begins to question the male supremacy at the heart of her religion–essentially spouting sacrilege–the other women are ready to pounce. Again, this is a great metaphor for patriarchy, and the way women are forced to accept concessions or jockey for position within its strictures.

But it doesn’t work dramatically on Big Love these days, because it’s a constant drone rather than a provider of narrative momentum. While all the vigilantism and killing and politics provides motion for the storyline, the more compelling angle of how these women navigate their lives is background noise. One wife is unhappy. Then another wife is unhappy. But they always come back.

We’ve also lost some sympathy for Big Love’s “better” patriarch Bill. The question that the show danced up against–is he a good man trying to make his way despite believing in a misguided system or is he no better than the cruel polygamists he shuns?–has lost its tantalizing quality. Bill’s recent decision to run for office and then to expose his family’s “alternative lifestyle” to the jeers of everyone around him make him seem less megalomaniacal than stupid. With this guy as the “priesthood holder” it’s hard to see the pull of polygamy. And indeed Barb, the only wife with grown kids, has started to espouse the belief that “women can hold the priesthood” which is genuinely threatening to sever her from her family, perhaps permanently. But at this point, if she leaves Bill and the other wives, it won’t seem like a great victory for womankind. Instead it will be a “she should have done this back when” moment. Because the squabbles of the wives as they chafe at their position now sound more like whining and less like women in a genuine dilemma.

Instead of seeking so many storylines outside of the family circle, the truly interesting (and feminist) choice would have been to keep the momentum centered on the four hearths of the Henrickson household.

I’m pretty honest about not being into or knowing too much about certain types of media or issues and events that arise. Lady Gaga is one of those phenomenons I’m just not well versed on and have limited desire to be. With that said, I don’t follow her career, nor do I keep up on what she does or wears. This doesn’t mean I’m completely ignorant of what she produces and some of her songs; I have friends that are total stans!

Part of my lack of interest in her stems from recognizing some of the cultural appropriation she participates in. Most apparent to me was her use of costumes, which I’ve seen and grew up with by various performers, such as Celia Cruz and La Lupe (yeah she’s before Madonna, Cher, and Cyndi Lauper). It’s one thing to be inspired by an entertainer, it’s another thing to completely use and claim as one’s own aspects of their identity and performance art.

When I heard that Lady Gaga had leaked the lyrics to a new song “Born This Way” I wasn’t really giving it any thought. Then I read an article by Miguel Perez that discussed why some Latinos are turned off by some lyrics in this song and have connected them to racism. To be honest again, last time I really listened to or cared about something Lady Gaga did, it was when she did NOT cancel her concert in Arizona. I watched part of a video a fan uploaded about her commentary regarding SB1070 and wasn’t really impressed.

So, the history of Lady Gaga not having too many politically/socially conscious and happy Latino fans was nothing new to me. What was new to me was her use of some forms of language, so I read Perez’s article to see what was used. A full list of the lyrics to her song was provided by the website Pop Eater where you can see all of them and some snippets of her performing a bit of the chorus.

When I read the lyrics Perez discusses in his article, I found more issues with some of her lyrics in the rest of the song, including the part discussed. Below are the lyrics in question, I didn’t add any emphasis nor do I know how or if she capitalized any of the terms (as I would have), so I wrote them as I saw them listed:

Don’t be a drag, just be a queen Whether you’re broke or evergreen You’re black, white, beige, chola descent You’re Lebanese, you’re orient Whether life’s disabilities Left you outcast, bullied, or teased Rejoice and love yourself today ‘Cause baby you were born this way

No matter gay, straight, or bi Lesbian, transgendered life I’m on the right track baby I was born to survive No matter black, white or beige Chola or oriental made I’m on the right track baby I was born to be brave

Now, I have three issues with three terms she has used in this song: “Chola [descent],” “Orient/al,” and “transgendered.” Perez’s article only discusses the (mis)use of the first term “Chola” which over the past two generations in the US has been associated primarily with Mexican, Mexican-American, Chican@ and Xican@ women. As with many Spanish language terms, they are gendered. The term “Chola” is referring to a woman as it ends with an “a;” if it were to end with an “o” it would be masculine.

As someone who is not of Mexican descent, I was not raised with a familiarity of this term, however, when I began to read Gloria Anzaldúa, specifically Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, I was introduced to different languages. Among the various languages that have been derived from Spanish and English is Caló and Pachuco. From my understanding Pachuco was the language created by people of Mexican descent in the 30s and 40s (maybe even earlier as language is constantly evolving) and as Anzaldua writes in her fifth chapter “How To Tame A Wild Tongue:” “From kids and people my own age I picked up Pachuco. Pachuco (the language of the zoot suiters) is a language of rebellion, both against Standard Spanish and Standard English. It is a secret language. Adults of the culture and outsiders cannot understand it. It is made up of slang words from both English and Spanish” (p. 78).

Caló, many folks agree, emerged from the Pachuco language and is still used among youth and communities in attempts to have their own language that keeps outsiders out. It is through these languages that we have come to understand and recognize the term “Chola” which was embraced by many in social justice movements in the US (if you are unfamiliar with the Brown Berets I encourage you to read up on them and their contributions to the Civil Rights Movement). Today, it seems there is a different use and understanding of the term. As many folks may understand, the terms when used in-group as they were created by members of the community, they mean and represent something very different in comparison to what meaning outsiders using the term may associate.

As a result, we have some disagreement and even allegations of racism (which I think are more connected to White supremacy and Lady Gaga’s use of it in this song to her advantage than a hatred or dislike for a group of people), when outsiders, as Lady Gaga is, in using this term. I’m not surprised that Perez, who identifies as Mexican American, finds this use of the term inappropriate and oppressive. I’m also not surprised other commentators who identify as Latino do not share Perez’s perspective. After all not all Latinos are of Mexican descent. Nor are all Latinos speaking the same language.

Another aspect that was not addressed in Perez’s article that I believe to be important to this discussion is her misuse of the term “Orient” and “Oriental” as a proper noun. Now, call me old school, but I thought that these terms were only used when talking about rugs and noodles, never in talking about people. So why are so many folks choosing to focus just on the term “Chola” when this term is just as offensive and has a long history of vilifying people from various Asian backgrounds?

Finally, her use of the term “transgendered” and associated that with “life” is just wrong, grammatically and in general. We do not say “womened” or “maned” to describe someone’s gender identity, so why are we doing that for transgender? It’s wrong folks, please know this and spread the word! Now, when we attach a community to a word like “life” or “lifestyle” that’s a whole lot more ish to deconstruct. I’ll look to GLAAD’s (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Media Reference Guide suggestions to help clarify why using terms such as “life” and “lifestyle” are incorrect and what alternatives are offered:

Offensive: “gay lifestyle” or “homosexual lifestyle” Preferred: “gay lives,” “gay and lesbian lives” There is no single lesbian, gay or bisexual lifestyle. Lesbians, gay men and bisexuals are diverse in the ways they lead their lives. The phrase “gay lifestyle” is used to denigrate lesbians and gay men, suggesting that their orientation is a choice and therefore can and should be “cured

Although this description speaks specifically to LGB communities, I think we can also apply it to trans people as well. Claiming that there is a “transgender lifestyle” is wrong. The lives of transgender people are often always already ignored and not valued. As a result, I can see how some folks may argue that Lady Gaga even mentioning trans people (even if grammatically incorrect) is a step in the right direction. However, these are not the types of steps we need! What does it mean to us that we appreciate less than exceptional forms of media simply because we see ourselves somewhat represented? Our standards and expectations must be higher. I think for many of us here at Amplify this is why we do the work we do.

It seems fitting that I end with some of Anzaldúa’s thoughts about language:

“..for a language to remain alive it must be used….So if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity—I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself. Until I can accept as legitimate Chicano Texas Spanish, Tex-Mex, and all the other languages I speak, I cannot accept the legitimacy myself. Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me my tongue will be illegitimate.

I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: India, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue-my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence” (p. 81).

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/02/13/gaga-fans-please-explain/feed/5What Lies Beneath “Skins?”http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/01/23/what-lies-beneath-skins%E2%80%9D-0/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-lies-beneath-skins%25E2%2580%259D-0
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/01/23/what-lies-beneath-skins%E2%80%9D-0/#commentsSun, 23 Jan 2011 20:16:35 +0000Is MTV's new show a "gritty" look at teens’ lives without moralizing, or is it an overhyped remake looking for scandal to drive ratings?

]]>Teenagers doing drugs and having sex is nothing new on TV, but it’s usually accompanied by a hackneyed moral message (a la “Secret Life of the American Teenager”) or a complex emotional story (a la “Friday Night Lights”). Teenagers doing drugs, having sex, and having few regrets about it beyond their own self interest, however, is something not seen much on the small screen. And that’s what the marketers of MTV’s new show “Skins” are hoping will draw big audiences: Illicit activity. Teenagers. Res ipsa loquitor.

And if that promise fails to generate enough buzz in a post “Gossip-Girl” era, there’s always a whiff of even tawdrier scandal to boost ratings, arising from the choice to cast “real teens” for this “gritty” scripted drama. This particular scandal arrives thanks to a highly-placed media story (that happens to be sourced anonymously from the network which happens to be looking for a hit) claiming MTV brass is worried that these scantily-clad or half-naked teenage actors may be running afoul of child pornography laws. Taco Bell, that arbiter of decency, has even pulled its ads.

The premise is intriguing, certainly. But does such an uncensored view of teenagedom (aided by the aforementioned young actors as well a crew of young writers and consultants) serve a purpose beyond shock value?

Many who watched the British version of the show, on which this new series is heavily based, say yes. The British “Skins” has developed a cult following on this side of the pond thanks to word of mouth and Netflix streaming. A few months ago, Maya Dusenbery at Feministing joined the growing chorus of Stateside “Skins” fanatics and wrote the post “Seven Feminist Reasons to Watch the British Teen Drama Skins Before American TV Ruins It.” It included this:

The lack of moralizing extends to sex as well. And there’s a lot of it in Skins. Some sex is between couples, some is between friends, some is between strangers. Some is emotionally fulfilling, some isn’t. Some is physically satisfying, some isn’t. The girls are just as likely to have casual sex as the guys, and the guys are just as likely to want a relationship as the girls…Perhaps even more importantly, in Skins, characters of both genders have both committed and casual sex at different times. Kinda like in real life! And because neither guys or girls are defined by their sexual behavior, that’s not at all strange. Skins recognizes that a girl who’s been having lots of emotionally meaningless sex can still get chills when she touches the hand of the boy she’s falling for.

The subject matter of the American remake is almost equally frank thus far, and at face value it isn’t such a stretch from many teens’ lives. Teenager live sexual and emotional existences that are complex and full of ups and downs, something we stress here at RHRC all the time. As Jess Bennett wrote at Newsweek last week:

They do have sex; they do experiment with drugs. Three in 10 of them will get pregnant before they turn 20, and 9 percent of them will attempt suicide, according to the Centers for Disease Control. They can be angry and volatile, depressed, isolated, and often insecure.

Not everyone agrees with this assessment of “Skins'” accuracy however. At Double X, Hanna Roisin writes that the show is”a teenage fantasy about teenage life lived at the heady, reckless extreme. Also the show involves traditional narrative arcs which revolve around a different character in each episode. In other words, it’s drama, not realism.” Roisin believes that our concept of “realism” has warped by the fake-real scriptedness of reality tv.

In the comments section of that earlier Feministing post was the most accurate description of the “Skins” aesthetic I’ve seen. It’s not gritty or realistic, because for most teenagers–even the wildest ones– true-to-life depictions would involve a lot of boredom and mindless goofing off sans substances, or plugging away at jobs and at school. Rather, the aesthetic is what the commenter called “hyper-real,” as though weekend upon wild weekend were smashed up against each other, and teenage life was an endless drama of friendship, betrayal, lust and confusion, never thrown into relief by the feeling of the mundane or everyday. In the American premiere, this narrative style was replicated with some glossing and toning, but perhaps to lesser effect (certainly, that was the critical consensus). Even the frenetic opening scene in which the antihero Tony and his father shout at each other over bathroom privileges and loud music seemed like someone had pressed the fast forward button and upped the volume. Perhaps that’s how the writers believe life feels for teenagers, but it was irritating to me as a viewer. And while the slang and quick-wit may not seem as brash in that Bristol British accent, some of it admittedly gets lost in translation, to use the cliche that all American critics are using this week. Much of the dialogue comes across as canned and not cute.

Personally, I admit to being disappointed in the first US episode because of its stilted, souped-up feeling. But I did not feel that the subject matter was exploitative so much as it cut corners with its characters, showing only the titillating aspects of their lives. Shows about teenagers should definitely cover their sex lives and other taboo subjects, but not necessarily at the expense of everything else. It’s the collision of disparate things–sex and drugs and homework and serving slurpees and family pressure and the boredom of being grounded or forced to babysit and figuring out what your adult values may one day be–that makes teenage life such a fascinating subject for artistic exploration.

Therefore, like many other viewers, if the trend continues on MTV I will likely switch to watching hours of the more satisfying British show on Netflix instead.

What did you think of the premiere and will you stick with MTV’s version this season in the hopes that it will flesh out (forgive the pun) its characters? Sound off in the comments section.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/01/23/what-lies-beneath-skins%E2%80%9D-0/feed/0Combating The Sexualization of Girls…The Right Wayhttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2010/12/29/combating-girls-sexualizationthe-right/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=combating-girls-sexualizationthe-right
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2010/12/29/combating-girls-sexualizationthe-right/#commentsWed, 29 Dec 2010 15:24:47 +0000Two movements this year have sought to combat the "sexualization of young girls." But one of them is not like the other.

]]>Earlier this month, the far-too censorship-happy Parents Television Council released a report highly critical of the sexualization of young girls on television.

Just this fall, a coalition of feminist groups had a huge summit called SPARK (“Sexualization protest: action, resistance, knowledge”) at which they gathered to protest the sexualization of young girls in pop culture, including television.

Both cite a groundbreaking American Psychological Association study about the damaging effects of girls’ exposure to highly sexualized images.

And yet one of these things is not like the other, despite their seeming similarity.

The first anti-sexualization movement comes from the same folks who freak out about naughty words on our screens. They’re a “non-partisan” group that is essentially a front for right-wing pooh-poohing of pop culture. Theirs is a finger-shaking type of movement to curb sex scenes featuring teens on TV. What kind of scenes do they disapprove of? The kind of scenes for which they helpfully offer us a montage to clue us in (I’m sure no one was titillated by putting that montage together) including the infamous Gossip Girl threesome and lots and lots of female-initiated vampire biting. The Daily News wrote a (rather critical) piece about the PTC’s latest findings:

The study, which looked at the top 25 shows on broadcast television among viewers age 12-17, found that underage female characters have a higher percentage of sexual scenes compared to adult characters. It also found that only 5% of underage female characters showed any dislike about a sexual situation.

To be fair, however, the group’s website does rely rigorously on the APA’s standards and findings, which are non-partisan and fairly accurate. While their movement against girls’ sexualization may be more in good faith than say, their movement against profanity, their willingness to demand the removal of anything edgy on our screens makes the PTC hard to trust.

Interestingly, as the Daily News noted, the study did not deign to discuss sexual scenes involving young men, nor did it really make a big fuss about degrees or realism of sexual activity shown on screen. So the tepid teen kisses on, say, ABC Family or the condom-using sex on realistic shows are given the same general category as the glamorous back-of-limo scenes on the CW.

None of these findings are shocking–in fact, they square with what we observe on TV. Most teen-oriented shows fall into the “soapy melodrama with teen characters” category (i.e. The Vampire Diaries) or reality show about teens (i.e. My Super Sweet Sixteen–but more often Sixteen and Pregnant.) There are no cop or spy or hospital-staff dramas with teen protagonists in them. Teens don’t work in offices. And high school shows tend to focus on the social aspect of school, not the debate team or Chem class. So yes, it stinks that teens on TV don’t get the focus on their intellectual or work lives that their adult peers do.

But does it follow that the teens who are on TV should not be seen as sexual at all? Teens in real life are sexual beings, after all, and they make sexual choices every day.

This brings us to our second anti-sexualization movement, a movement whose origins and goals are entirely different. SPARK is a movement to celebrate girls for more than their sexuality and to aggressively combat product placement, advertising, and cultural messages aimed at tweens and preteens that directly sexualize them–like pole dancing for twelve-year olds and push up bras before training bras. This is a movement that also has beef with media portrayals of writhing, gyrating teen and twentysomething pop sensations–like the Glee stars’ racy GQ poses.

But the beef is not because they’re seen as sexual, because they’re playing into a version of sexuality that is catering to male fantasies. It’s about treating sexuality as something that comes from within, not a plastered-on image in high heels and short skirts.

Confused? It’s a tricky distinction. When it comes to young girls and sex in pop culture, we run up against the kind of nuanced fine lines that it can be very hard to sell to the general public. How many Americans understand the difference between being against the sexualization of women or girls and being anti-sexuality?

But that’s all the more reason it’s an important line to draw. At the SPARK summit, Jamia Wilson repeated the line “we are not anti-sex, we are not anti-sex” repeatedly during her rousing opening speech. Feminists against sexualization want women to be able to explore their sexuality without having to live up to impossible standards that lead to low self-esteem, eating disorders, and unhealthy sexual choices. And so they oppose the imposition of a male-oriented sexuality on women.

Therefore their issue isn’t just that teen girls on TV have sex or engage in sexual behavior like suggestive dancing or making out. Instead, their concern is that teen girls on TV are often reduced to sex objects or miniature versions of sexual stereotypes: temptresses, vixens, sluts. Girls having sex in long-lasting relationships or because they *gasp* want to? That’s okay, as long as they’re armed with the right information and a spectrum of choices and alternatives about how they can be sexy and still be themselves.

If you want to know why feminists are obsessed with shows like Friday Night Lights and the late, great My-So-Called Life, it’s because they show the reality of teen girls being obsessed with and learning about and experimenting with sex–as teen girls generally do–but only as part of a broader spectrum of their lives which includes classes, parents, sports, and friendship.

Sexuality vs. Sexualization. It’s a distinction we all need to practice making so we can continue the work that SPARK has begun.